


Blustery (30 Days of Prompts)

by JoifulDreaming



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:33:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27337225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoifulDreaming/pseuds/JoifulDreaming
Summary: A nightmare on a stormy night.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 47





	Blustery (30 Days of Prompts)

**Author's Note:**

> For my NaNoWrimo project: 30 days of short story prompts.

The wind was howling so loudly in Crowley's ears that he couldn't hear his own gasps and cries as he plummeted. It whipped through his curls and painfully wrenched feathers from his wings. A new sensation- a new emotion- was blooming in his middle; a feeling he had never felt before. It clawed it's way from the very center of him, up through his throat, and escaped as a scream that he still couldn't hear with the wind pulling it away from him as it rushed past his senses. Surely no amount of space could make a fall take this long. Tumbling end over end, he caught glimpses of the trail of feathers he was leaving behind in the sky. They didn't tumble as he did, instead they drifted away in peaceful irony. He longed to snap open his wings and catch himself, but they wouldn't open properly. Why wouldn't they open?

The feeling burning in his throat and aching in his very teeth, he realized, was terror. He hadn't any need for true terror in Heaven, only a respectful fear. The fear of love, as She had taught them. To know something so powerful was to fear it, but She would never hurt them and that was love. Or so he had been led to believe. This plummet proved otherwise; this wasn't love.

Terror, he came to realize, could only increase so far before it plateaued. At some point the screaming stopped. It wasn't doing him a bit of good anyway. He sucked in great breaths, trying to calm himself and curled inwards around his middle. Whenever the end came, he didn't need to watch it arrive.

Pain bloomed in the small of his back and he wondered if this was another new feeling to experience. He curled in on himself further, trying to escape it as long as he could. The prodding came again: this time at his hip. Belatedly, he realized it wasn't so much pain as pressure. It seemed like pain because he was already so overstimulated. It might as well be pain.

A tugging at his ankle only made annoyance slither it's way up his spine. He was falling indefinitely, being torn apart by the very atmosphere around him, lost to Her and everything he had ever known. Because he had questions, that was all. Because he had realized that others had questions, too. Why create beings with questions only to abandon them when they decided to voice them?

The tugging was more insistent now and, distantly, a voice.

No, that couldn't be right. That's not how this went. In fact, he should have hit bottom by now. He should be burning, his wings blackening, in a smoldering and seemingly endless sea of sulphur.

He mentally batted the voice away so he could concentrate.

This wasn't actually happening. Oh, it had happened. Just, not exactly like this.

The wind was so very, very real, though. It howled on, even as he realized that none of this was real. The terror wasn't real, though it had been. The wind ripping at his wings wasn't real, though it had been. The pain of separation was real and ongoing, but... that, too, had been replaced with something else.

The wind died down suddenly, as if it realized it couldn't hold the illusion any longer. Now it only ruffled his feathers in gentle waves. It wasn't dry as it had been when he fell, but damp and chilly.

The voice was closer now and soft next to his face. Warmth suffused his cheek and he leaned into it instinctually. He was so very cold. And that was the final thing that jolted him out of his memory-sleep.

“There you are, my dear,” blue eyes stared directly into his when he managed to open them, worriedly looking for recognition, “you gave me quite a fright when I woke up and you were gone.”

He swallowed hard, throat still burning and refusing to cooperate. But he did recognize Aziraphale with no small helping of relief. His world had not yet righted itself, but if the angel was here then he must be safe.

“Do you think you're ready to come down from here? It's okay if not, but I would like to hold you and I can't do that on this chair.”

Crowley blinked and tore his eyes away from the safety of Aziraphale's warm, slightly less worried gaze for the first time. It would appear that he was on the ceiling. It had been a while since he had slept here, though he had spent many nights in this arrangement before. Aziraphale was standing on a chair beneath him, in his dressing gown, a broom propped against the bed beside him.

“Your first thought was to prod me with a broom?” He couldn't help the incredulity that dripped from his voice.

“Well, I didn't want to leave to find a ladder at this time of night... it's so blustery, you see, and the house has drafts. And, I didn't want you to wake up here alone...” Aziraphale wasn't looking at him now, looking down at his own hands, instead, as he wrung them.

“It's okay, I didn't meant it like that,” his voice rasped and broke over every other word, “I should probably thank you for waking me at all.”

“I wasn't going to leave you in whatever world you were in,” Aziraphale got down from the chair carefully and made his way over to their open bedroom window, closing it but remaining there, looking out over the angry storm passing over their cottage, “I'll always come for you, Crowley, you know that. Wherever you are, that's where I want to be. And... if I can help, I want to help.”

Crowley slithered down from the ceiling and sat heavily on the chair for a few moments, grounding himself in the real world. He could hear the wind and rain and thunder. He could smell the musty books in the next room. He could feel the solid wood of the chair under his hands. 

Aziraphale half turned his head from the window, but even with the occasional lightening strike in the distance, Crowley couldn't make out his expression. He stood and crossed the room in a couple long strides and wrapped his arms around Aziraphale's middle.

“Now,” the angel tutted, “I said I would hold you. This is a little backwards.”

“Big backwards fan, me,” Crowley squeezed him gently and nuzzled his face into the side of his neck, “I'm sorry I frightened you.”

“Well that's... well.” Crowley didn't have to see his face to know he was pressing his lips together to smother a smile. He unfurled his wings and shivered in delight that they were intact, not broken and bleeding and burnt as they had been after his fall. He folded them around the angel in his arms, surrounding them in a soft cocoon of feathers that blocked out the roar of the thunder and rain as well as the flashes of lightening. 

“Do you want to tell me what you were dreaming about?” Aziraphale's hands crept over his own, stroking over his knuckles.

“Not in detail; not tonight,” he bit the inside of his cheek to keep from saying more, to keep it from spilling out into the quiet little space that he had created. Not tonight. He didn't want to live it again. He wanted to live in the reality he'd chosen, the one he had chosen to protect. The one with Aziraphale.

“But... it was your fall, wasn't it?”

Crowley swallowed hard and nodded.

“You don't have to say more tonight, I just wanted to know,” soft hands squeezed his own before Aziraphale turned within the circles of his arms and wings and nuzzled his cheek. “Come to bed with me.”

Crowley nodded and put his wings away, watching Aziraphale watch him do so. The angel's eyes glittered in the dark room and his fingers twitched as if to touch the feathers before the left. But, he didn't make the request, only smiled and cocked his head coyly. 

They parted momentarily to get into bed and crawled under the covers. Crowley immediately scooted towards the center and Aziraphale opened his arms to him, pulling him in close.

“I don't regret it, you know,” the words were mumbled into the linen covered chest in front of him, “it catches up with me sometimes, is all.”

“What don't you regret?” Hands were in Crowley's hair, combing through it rhythmically.

“Any of it.”

“No? You wouldn't do any of it differently if you could?” The fingers paused, buried deeply in a the sea of red locks.

“Absolutely not.”

“I can't imagine that kind of surety. I mean... Well, I don't regret what we did. Ultimately. But, along the way... things could have been... easier.”

“Nah.”

“Just like that?”

“Anything we might've done differently would have changed what I have now. Wouldn't wanna risk it, Angel,” Crowley peeped up and smiled lopsidedly at him. Aziraphale hummed in agreement, taking up stroking his head again.

“I suppose you're right. To everything there is a season.”

Crowley groaned softly and rested his head back down again.

The rain had slacked off outside now, just pattering away at the windows as the sun struggled to rise over the trees, to do battle with the clouds. Crowley snuggled in close and sighed softly. It had taken time, perseverance, and- he was convinced- no small amount of luck to reach his soft landing. No, he wouldn't change it for anything. Aziraphale was humming a familiar tune, though he couldn't place it. And, he didn't try. He listened and it felt it through the angel's chest and he allowed himself to drift, knowing that there was nowhere safer than where he was right now and nowhere he would rather be.


End file.
